Virginia Small Business Owner: Lawmakers Need to Act Now to Help the State’s Economy Recover

March 4, 2022 Last Edit: June 5, 2025

Cheryl Spraberry of Norfolk Explains Why NFIB’s Small Business Recovery Plan Matters

Virginia Small Business Owner: Lawmakers Need to Act Now to Help the State’s Economy Recover

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation’s leading small business advocacy organization, today released its second video reiterating its “Virginia Small Business Recovery Plan” as first announced by NFIB at the beginning of the legislative session. You can find that announcement here. Today’s video is told by Cheryl Spraberry, owner of AIT Marine and Surge Force, LLC based out of Norfolk. Her businesses work together to provide jobs and repair Navy ships that service our country. In her testimony, Spraberry highlights the need for unemployment insurance reform, one of NFIB’s four legislative principles. The other three principles include tax relief, sensible regulations, and financial assistance. You can watch her testimony here.

Cheryl Spraberry – VA Small Business Recovery Plan 2022.mp4 from NFIB Video on Vimeo.

“A great legislative piece of NFIB’s Business Recovery program is unemployment tax. The funds are gone. What’s going to happen next and who’s going to pay for that? In the past year, our business has lost a tremendous amount of employees because of the unemployment and the stimulus that was provided. We also experienced large amounts of fraudulent activity and claims being paid out even though we said that those employees were either currently working or some that had never worked for us. “My fear is now that the reserves are gone. What’s going to happen through unemployment tax? I’ve been paying for one employee that I’ve never employed and two for fraudulent claims for employees actually working for me, so I don’t think it’s fair for any business to have to bear the burden.” Yesterday, NFIB here in Virginia applauded the legislature for making process on another one of our four pillars: sensible regulations. Earlier this week, both the House and Senate passed legislation that would prevent small business owners from another costly and time-consuming government-mandated program.

Topics:

Regulations

State:

Virginia

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